Ice museum planned in Italy to document climate change

27/11/2012

Glacier galleries would be world's first

Milan, November 27 - Plans are in the works to
launch the world's first glacial ice museum in Italy as a means
of documenting global climate history, organizers announced
Tuesday.
"Thanks to drilling in glaciers, we can investigate the
climate of the past, going back in time by a million years,"
said Agostino Da Polenza, the president of a planning commission
from the Italian national research council.
Polenza was speaking in Milan at a conference on the health
of Italy's glaciers, which like those in the rest of the world
have been melting amid climate change over the past 50 years.
"Our goal is to create a depository of continental glacier
samples...that would allow us to conserve information on the
glaciers which risk extinction".
The museum, which would consist of a series of massive
freezers, would go up in Milan where a team at Bicocca
University already manages an archive of glacier samples from
Antarctica.
Polenza said the proposal has been well received by
research institutes in France, China and the United States.
He plans to showcase the project during the 2015 World's
Fair in Milan, where the theme is devoted to fighting global
hunger.
"Beyond feeding the planet," said Polenza, "we also need to
give it water, and glaciers are an extremely important water
reservoir for humankind".